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Facebook Ads Reports: A Tour of a Powerful New Tool

Jon Loomer

Facebook has updated the ads reporting tool — a tool most advertisers don’t know even exists — to be incredibly useful.

The new tool allows you to quickly determine how a single ad performed by age, country and placement without having to split test with multiple ads. It also allows you to evaluate the performance of your ad based on Action metrics (conversions, for example) and cost per that action.

Go to facebook.com/ads/manage/reporting.php to access your reports.

If it looks like this…

…it’s your lucky day! You have the new Facebook ad reports.

If it looks like this…

…sorry! You still have the old Facebook ad reports. You’ll need to wait for the new ones to be rolled out to you.

Regardless of whether or not you have the new Facebook ad reports yet, I’ve written this post to help you understand all of the awesome new features available within it.

This will be a top-level overview. I’ll write other posts in the future to provide more hands-on examples of how it can be used.

Edit Columns

One of the most exciting pieces of this new tool is the ability to edit precisely what information you want to be shown in a Facebook ads report.

With the Edit Columns feature, for example, you could compare the performance of ads based on the following:

You couldn’t view all of these within the same report, but they are all available and extremely valuable.

Following are all of the various columns that are available to you…

Dimensions – Data Aggregation

This allows you to easily evaluate which campaigns or ads, for example, performed best. Probably best to at least keep the name of the ad within a column.

Dimensions – Data Breakdowns

Possibly the most exciting inclusion in this tool. You can only choose one of these per report, but this allows you to easily compare the Cost Per Action, for example, of ads based on age, gender, country and placement.

For example, you could create one ad that targets all placements. Then create a report to compare your Cost Per Action for Desktop News Feed, Mobile News Feed, All Desktop and the Desktop Sidebar.

With this information, you could then stop that original ad and then start a new one that uses those optimized specs.

I’m most excited about this because I notoriously create dozens of ads in my split testing to help determine this. It’s no longer completely necessary (split testing is still important for copy and imagery, however).

Metrics – Delivery & Spend

Include columns for the metrics you feel are important. In my opinion, most important here is Spend to keep other results relative.

Metrics – Clicks

Personally, I’m not particularly concerned about general clicks. You can select as many of these as you want. I tend to keep all unselected.

Metrics – Actions

This is the good stuff! This is what determines success and failure of your campaign. Now, you may, however, want to skip this section and go directly to “Cost Per Action.” But including at least one of these columns could be important for perspective.

In general, you can select columns for:

These actions can then be broken down by those associated with your Facebook Page, External URL, Application or Event.

If you create ads that drive users to an offsite landing page that drives some sort of conversion with an offsite pixel (purchase, lead, add to cart, etc.), this is extremely useful!

Facebook Page:

External URL:

Applications:

Events:

Metrics – Cost per Action

This is where you make and save money. For me, the true measure of success of an ad campaign comes down to Cost per Action.

Once again, this is broken down by actions associated with your Facebook Page, External URL, Application or Event.

Facebook Page:

External URL:

Applications:

Events:

Ad Filters

You probably want to view only certain campaigns or certain ads within a campaign to keep any comparison relevant. For example, there’s no reason to compare a campaign aimed at getting Page Likes to one focused on offsite conversions.

So make sure you use your filters to select applicable ads and campaigns. You can create more than one filter if necessary…

Dates

Do you want to view performance only during a specific period of time? Make sure you select the applicable dates to compare here…

You can also determine how many days will apply to each row. Maybe you want all days to apply. But you can also break up an ad’s performance into seven day increments to see if it is trending in a positive or negative direction…

Schedule Reports

This is great for any advertisers who need to provide reports to clients or higher up — or for any advertiser who simply needs regular reminders regarding the performance of their advertising.

Choose how often these reports are generated and have alerts emailed to you when they are ready.

Save Report Settings

Do you have specific filters that you will use later? Save them! This is a great time saver.

More to Come!

Have you tried out the new Facebook Ad Reporting yet? This is an exceptional tool that will only get better. I am still experimenting with it and will provide more posts in the future with specific use cases to leverage these reports for your success.

Let me know how you’re using them in the comments below!

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